Chap. HI. THE COLONISTS AND THE GOVERNOR. 77 
body of men were not to be neglected, and then appeased 
by a jest about an " olive-branch," or by- a sop in the 
pan : that they were not to be trampled into remon- 
strance, and then awed into submission by a ludicrous 
attempt to display " power and dignity." In short, it 
must have been clear to him that they had brought from 
England the knowledge and intelligence, the education 
and manners, the high courage and generous mind, the 
warm friendship and undaunted advocacy of their own 
liberties, peculiar to British gentlemen ; and that they 
saw through and despised his undignified jealousy and 
spite, his partiality to his own bantling settlement, and 
his obstinate perseverance in maintaining a destructive 
rivalry between the local Government and the northern 
settlers on the one hand, and the Company and its 
settlers in Cook's Strait on the other. They soon dis- 
covered that the interests of the natives, of the mission- 
aries, and of the early settlers, were not considered by 
Captain Hobson for their intrinsic value, but as instru- 
ments to support his own scheme, and to crush its older, 
more successful, and more reasonable rival. And they 
fully understood that he had gone away, detesting, as 
much as he had learned to respect them ; and that an 
unnatural war was still to continue between their legal 
protector and themselves. 
Not yet despairing of ultimate justice from England, 
they again girded up their loins for the struggle ; and, 
glancing carefully around at the naturally advantage- 
ous field of battle which they had chosen, they trusted 
to their own vigorous efforts, and looked forward to 
earning the victory at last, perhaps by a longer course of 
toil and disappointment, but therefore in a manner the 
more creditable to themselves. They began to say, 
what even now they do not cease to assert, that the 
gifts of nature to their adopted country, in soil, in posi- 
tion, and in climate, were so abundant as to warrant 
